1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the manufacture of articles suitable for mailing comprising an outer envelope containing at least one pre-printed enclosure and a pre-formed return envelope, one or more of which can be personalized.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The method described herein is particularly suited for commercial production of articles such as advertisements, solicitations, billings and the like, in which the printed contents is for the most part the same, and tens of thousands, or even millions of articles must be mailed. Such mailings often include a return envelope to encourage a favorable and prompt reply.
Large volume mailings of this type are often "personalized." A mailed article is personalized when information more or less unique to the intended recipient is printed on the article and/or on its enclosures. The information that can be personalized includes the recipient's name, address, sex, age, account or billing number, and other data. The information can be represented by either alpha-numeric characters or indicia particularly adapted to be read by electronic character recognition devices, such as bar codes and the like.
This invention is a further improvement over the method previously disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,067,171, issued Jan. 10, 1978. That patent describes a method for preparing an envelope containing a plurality of enclosure sheets. Also pertinent is the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 3,557,519 issued Jan. 29, 1971, which describes a method for making, from an envelope sheet integral with a letter sheet, an addressed envelope containing a single personalized letter. The methods disclosed in both these patents permit large volume mailings of personalized articles while eliminating the possibility of mismatching.
The teachings and disclosures of both U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,557,519 and 4,067,171 are incorporated herein by reference. In the practice of the inventions claimed in the above patents, as well as other methods known to the prior art for preparing mailers, if a reply envelope was to be enclosed in the mailer it was necessary to insert the reply envelope into the outer envelope as a separate step before sealing. The reply envelope could only be personalized at the risk of mismatching the personalized information printed on the reply envelope with the other items mailed.